


A Story About A Knight

by purple_bookcover



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: F/M, M/M, Polyamory, Polyamory Negotiations, Pre and Post Timeskip, Sad and Happy, annette week, background ashe/felix, background ashelix, i just really like their ending card
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-07
Updated: 2020-05-07
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:54:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24059290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purple_bookcover/pseuds/purple_bookcover
Summary: Once upon a time, there was a knight...Annette tells the story of her favorite knight. And if he happens to resemble a certain minty-eyed, silver-haired classmate, well, that's just a coincidence.
Relationships: Annette Fantine Dominic/Ashe Duran | Ashe Ubert
Comments: 24
Kudos: 48





	A Story About A Knight

**Author's Note:**

> Their ending card came at me out of nowhere. I spend the whole game trying to mash Ashe and Felix together and then I got the Ashenette ending card and it's legitimately my favorite one of all time. So that's roughly the inspiration for this. I took a few light liberties with the canon to make this work.
> 
> Written for Annette Week day 1: Perseverance/Reason/Letters

_Once upon a time, there was a knight..._

Annette tapped the crow feather quill against her cheek. Could she really start a story that way? It was so lazy, so cliché.

“Hey, Annette.”

She squeaked, startling so badly she nearly spilled her ink. Ashe stepped through the garden toward the table where she sat. 

Annette hastily gathered up her papers, pressing them against her chest as he sat across from her. 

Ashe glanced at the ink and paper on the table. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing,” she said. “Nothing.” 

“I’m sorry if I interrupted,” he said. “You looked like you were in the middle of writing something.”

“Oh, I...” He was right, obviously. She had indeed been in the middle of writing, the ink still wet on the page.

Still wet. 

On the page.

The page now pressed to her chest.

Annette grimaced as she pulled the paper away. She could feel the ink sticking to her even as she peeled the wet sheet back. 

Annette groaned, setting the paper on the table. The ink was so mangled from being pressed against her that it was unreadable, so at least there was that. But her uniform jacket was also soaked, black soaking into the gold lapels. 

“Oh no,” she moaned. 

Ashe was watching her with pity. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to mess up your writing.”

“I-it wasn’t you,” she said. Her stuttering heart betrayed her lie. It was _absolutely_ him, but she couldn’t say that. Him seeing what she’d been writing would have been bad enough. Him knowing he’d inspired it, that he was the knight in her story, would be downright unbearable. Even thinking about it made her cheeks feel hot. 

“I’m really sorry,” he said again. “I was just hoping to see what you were writing.”

She sat up straighter, blinking. “W-what?” 

He laughed. “Well, you’ve been working so hard on something. I’m just curious to see what it is.” 

Annette felt her eyes going wide, felt the blush in her cheeks deepening. 

“You don’t have to!” he said quickly. “I was just … curious. I like reading stories.” 

“It’s, um, it’s not very good. And it’s not even done. So... so...”

He stood. “I shouldn’t have interrupted.”

She looked up at him, wringing her hands before her stained uniform. He looked so kind, even as he stood over her. Something about those soft green eyes made her want to confess her secret project then and there. 

“I’ll leave you alone,” Ashe said, “but, you know, if you ever do want to show someone, well, I’d love to see it.”

He smiled and it was all Annette could do to remember to breathe while facing all those delicate freckles dappling his cheeks like seeds scattered over a field. 

She was still searching for words when he left.

#

_Once upon a time, there was a knight._

_He did not start out as a knight. At first, he was just an ordinary boy, a happy boy. But a terrible sickness spread through the town where he lived, killing his parents, among many others._

_Then, the boy was an orphan._

#

Annette summoned an unnatural wind into her hands. It danced between her fingers and trickled over her palms, awaiting her command.

She scanned the battlefield. Felix and Ingrid and Sylvain were on the front lines, chasing off bandits who found themselves grievously outmatched. Mercedes was healing Dedue, who’d led the Blue Lions’ charge across a narrow bridge and onto a plateau. Dimitri was with Byleth, the two managing the battle, though it looked all but over already. 

And Ashe.

Annette searched, finding him somewhere between the front line fighters and Mercedes healing in the back. He leveled his bow, calmly taking aim amid the chaos. When he released, his arrow flew true, jabbing into a bandit’s leg and sending the man to the ground before he could sneak in on Felix’s flank. 

Ashe didn’t look pleased about the shot. In one fluid motion, he retrieved a new arrow, holding it lightly against his bowstring, searching for a target. The wind picked up, brushing through his silver hair. 

Annette didn’t realize she was staring until he turned and caught her. 

For the rest of the battle, she focused on anyone but Ashe. But she couldn’t help thinking about her stories and daydreams when she saw him plucking a new arrow out of his quiver nearly before the previous one left his bow. It was so smooth, so natural and effortless for him. 

They routed the bandits easily, driving them off into the forest. On their way back to the academy, however, they found a chest tucked away on the plateau. 

“What is it?” Dimitri said.

“Whatever it is, those bandits wanted it,” Sylvain said, “so it’s gotta be valuable.” He kicked at the chest, but it remained stubbornly locked. 

Ingrid rolled her eyes and sighed. “I don’t think you’re going to kick it open.”

“Well, we gotta get it open somehow and I don’t see any of you holding the key.” 

“I will carry it back,” Dedue said. “Surely, someone in the monastery is capable of opening it.” 

“I can do it.”

Everyone swiveled toward Ashe. He blushed under the attention. 

“I, uh, I can do it,” he said. “I can open it.” 

Felix raised an eyebrow. Sylvain grinned. For her part, Annette gaped. 

Dimitri recovered the quickest. “Do you require any assistance?” 

Ashe shook his head. “Just need a couple minutes.”

Annette could taste the questions quivering in the air, but Dimitri merely nodded. “Very well. Go ahead. We’ll ensure none of those bandits return.”

The front liners scattered, scouring the plateau for any errant bandits still lurking about. Annette and Mercedes stayed close as a last line of defense. Behind them, Ashe kneeled before the chest. Annette could hear tiny clinks as metal tapped against metal. 

Curiosity got the better of her. Annette twisted to look behind her and saw Ashe fiddling with the lock. It looked like he was poking it with a hairpin, but that couldn’t be right. How in all the world would he get past that lock with nothing but that? 

There was a louder click. The padlock fell open into Ashe’s waiting hands. 

He caught her staring for the second time that day and smiled an apology. “Not quite like the knights in your stories,” he said.

His words lodged in her throat. She wanted to tell him no, he was nothing like those knights. He was better. More noble, more kind, more brave. More everything. 

But the words couldn’t squeeze out past his, so she simply smiled in return.

#

_After the sickness passed, the bandits arrived. There was no one left to stop them. The knight was still just a boy and so he hid with his siblings under a bed while men took everything they had left, everything that might hold value._

_His was not the only village that suffered. Throughout the land, illness took hold and bandits followed in its wake like a second wave of pestilence._

_The boy grew up, never forgetting those horrible days, never forgetting his dream of being a knight so that no one would have to suffer as he had._

#

When Annette entered the training room looking for Ashe, she found him standing near the wall, a bow limp in his hand. He didn’t hear her approach, didn’t so much as glance her way as she made it all the way to his shoulder. As she followed his gaze, she saw why.

Felix and Dimitri sparred in the training room, dancing back and forth, striking in a flurry of blows. Felix batted aside Dimitri’s spear. In two quick steps, Felix got up close, his practice sword at Dimitri’s neck. 

Annette heard Ashe sigh softly. 

“He’s pretty amazing, huh?” 

Ashe startled, blinking as he looked over at her. “Annette, I didn’t hear you. I’m sorry. I was just...”

“It’s OK,” she said. “Byleth sent me. We’ve got greenhouse duty today, remember?”

He flushed. “I completely forgot. Oh no, I’m so sorry. Is it – you didn’t already do it all on your own, did you?”

“’Course not. C’mon, let’s get started.” 

He seemed a little reluctant to set aside his bow, but he followed Annette from the training room. They headed toward the greenhouse in silence, though all the while Annette’s mind raced. She knew why Ashe watched Felix that way. Felix was every inch the knight Ashe dreamed of being. He’d practically been born into knighthood, being a Fraldarius and all, but even if he hadn’t, Felix’s relentless training, his effortless skill with a blade, his crest – they all made him the very picture of the dashing hero Ashe read about so often. 

But Felix didn’t have Ashe’s heart. He didn’t have Ashe’s patience, his kindness, his goodness. Felix wouldn’t catch a thief and wonder if his crimes were merely in service of feeding his family. 

Ashe would. 

To her mind, that made Ashe a better knight than Felix could ever be. 

They reached the greenhouse and set about weeding and trimming, watering and harvesting. Annette didn’t even realize she’d started humming until she heard him humming with her. 

She stopped, feeling her cheeks go hot. “Sorry.”

He just laughed. “Don’t apologize. You always hum while you work. I like it.” 

Her cheeks burned hotter. “Y-you...”

She thought she saw a twinge of pink in his face, but it was probably just the sunset refracting through the glass of the greenhouse. It made his hair look like it was painted in an ombre of pinks and purples that the silver beneath only served to brighten. 

“Annie, are you alright?” 

Annie. Only he ever called her that. And it made her heart leap into her throat every time.

Perhaps that’s why the next thing she said came right from that flutter in her chest, unfiltered by any rational thought. “I like you.”

He blinked, rocking back on his heels. “What?”

Annette swallowed, but there was no shoving down that lump clogging her throat. “I … like you.” 

“Well, I like you, too, Annette,” he said.

“No, I mean … I mean that I _like_ you.”

There was a held breath. His expression didn’t change, his smile didn’t waver, his minty eyes didn’t leave hers. “I knew what you meant,” he said simply. “I like you, too.” 

“What?” 

The moment called for something better, something more grand and eloquent and beautiful. His nonchalance left her wondering if anything she’d heard, or said, had even been real. 

He scooted closer – slowly, carefully, like someone introducing themselves to a cat – and held out his hand, not demanding, simply offering. 

She took it. She’d imagined this before, a hundred, thousand, million times, imagined his skin warm and soft against hers. In reality, it was cool, smudged with dirt and rough from handling a bow. Somehow, that was even better. 

He pulled her closer, just a gentle curling of fingertips to encourage her forward. Then, they stood nearly nose to nose surrounded by the soft spice of herbs and gentle perfume of violets and baby’s breath and lilies. 

He laughed just slightly. “Is this alright?” he said. 

Annette could do little but nod. How was he so calm about this, so unphased? While her whole body quivered, Ashe looked like he was still just sedately tending plants. 

“To be honest, I’ve liked you a long time,” he said. 

_This isn’t real. There’s no way this is real._

“It never seemed like the right time,” he said. “I mean, there was always a battle or skirmish. And now, well...”

He didn’t need to go on. Now, Edelgard was in Enbarr and threatening the church. Now, their world was falling apart. Now, things like weeding the greenhouse seemed like an absurd formality that wasn’t likely to matter much longer. Would they even get to graduate? Something that had once seemed so certain now sounded so remote. 

“Say something, Annie,” he said and for the first time she was positive the color on his cheeks wasn’t just the waning sunset. “I’m starting to feel kinda self-conscious.” 

“No.” It was all she could manage. She gulped. “No, I mean, you shouldn’t feel self-conscious. I-I told you first. I just...” She had no idea what she was trying to say, only that she liked being this close, liked that his hand still lightly held hers. 

“You just?” he said.

“I just...” She was drowning in those minty eyes, gasping for breath. The words emerged in a whisper. “I just … would really like to...”

He spared her from saying the rest, closing the breath of space between them. His lips were soft in all the ways she’d dreamed his hands might be, warm and cautious against her, so warm she felt like one of the greenhouse plants basking in reflected sunlight. 

And maybe the world was falling apart outside this little greenhouse, but for one moment, Annette didn’t care.

#

_One day, many years later, long after the boy became the knight he’d always dreamed of being, he rode into a village. When the villagers saw him, they rushed from their homes, staring in awe. They couldn’t imagine why a knight would ride out to somewhere so isolated, somewhere so unimportant._

_But the knight hopped off his horse and asked the villagers how he could help. Astonished, they told him they’d recently been raided by a group of bandits. The knight said he’d heard about their plight during his travels and he was going to aid them._

#

Dear Ashe,

I hope I sent this to the right place. It’s hard to know, now that we’re all scattered. It was so much easier to write to you back when we were students. 

Anyway, just hoping you’re well. I returned to Dominic, naturally. My mother and uncle were sick with worry when they heard about the monastery getting attacked. I think they’ll need my help now. 

If you need somewhere to go, perhaps [illegible, crossed out] 

Sincerely,  
Annette

#

Dear Ashe,

I wrote you a previous letter, but I never sent it. I’m pretty sure you’re somewhere around Gaspard now. When I think about it, that’s the only place I can imagine you going. I know you’d feel like you had to protect it what with [illegible, crossed out]

I hope your siblings are OK. You said you were worried. I hope you’re all together and safe now. It’s so crazy seeing the whole continent go to war. I don’t know how this will end, but I hope I get to [illegible, crossed out]

Sincerely,  
Annette

#

Ashe,

I’m wasting paper and ink, precious resources these days. I keep writing to you, only to crumple it up or stuff it in a notebook. Will I even send this one?

I wish I knew where you were. I wish I knew you were safe. I wish I could tell you to come here, that I could protect you here. But my uncle only thinks of war. I have little say in what goes on here. I help where I can, how I can, but it’s getting harder and harder to find any positives in this. 

I wish I was actually going to send this. 

Annie

#

_The knight left the village in search of the bandits. He went alone, scouring the surrounding forest._

_After two days, he found their camp. It was small, a smattering of tents made from coats and blankets draped over trees._

_The knight got off his horse, approaching the camp on foot. He left his weapons behind and made no mystery of his approach._

_When he stepped into the camp, three men pointed knives at him._

_“A knight,” one said._

_“He’s here to kill us,” another said._

_“I want to help,” the knight said._

_The bandits looked at each other, confused._

_“But we stole from that village.”_

_“You did,” the knight said, “but you did not harm anyone. And I do not believe you mean to. Return what you took and I will assist you.”_

_The bandits lowered their knives._

#

Even crumbling and broken, the monastery in Garreg Mach was a welcome sight.

Annette had tried to explain to her mother and uncle why she was leaving in the middle of a war. They hadn’t listened – or cared. In the end, she’d had to do little more than pack and ride away. All during the journey, she wondered if she’d be the only one who returned, the only one stupid enough to keep their promise after five years.

Every time her mind wandered that direction, a second thought chased the first: Ashe. 

She paced through the ruins of her former school. By all appearances, Annette was alone. She sighed, then smiled at herself, shaking her head. Of course she was. Why would any of them return at a time like this? 

Then she heard voices. Her heart stuttered. Annette hurried toward the sound, passing broken glass from the greenhouse, a tower of stone that had once been a building, and a roof with holes punched through it. 

She turned a corner. Mercedes spotted her first, practically shrieking as she rushed up to Annette.

“Oh goddess, I’m so glad you’re here,” Mercedes said. 

Annette hugged her oldest friend. They’d written over the past five years, but it was quite another thing to see for sure that Mercie yet lived. 

“Who else made it back?” Annette said. 

Mercedes led her toward the group. “So far, it’s just you, me, Dimitri, Felix, Sylvain and Ingrid.”

“What about...” 

Mercedes sobered, shaking her head. Two names remained conspicuously absent from her list. Annette dared not even think of them. 

Then they turned the corner and her blood went cold. 

Felix paced like a restless cat, looking ready to snarl at anything that came near. Ingrid was gray, exhausted, wavering even as she stood. Sylvain tried to smile, but it was false even by his standards. And Dimitri, Dimitri was the worst of all, wearing a dirty, blood-stiffened cloak and an eyepatch. If Felix was a pacing cat, Dimitri was a mangy dog backed into a corner and baring its teeth in warning. 

This was their reunion. This was what they’d become after five years. Beasts and ghosts and husks. Maybe it was better for Ashe and Dedue that they weren’t here. Even if that meant... 

Then he arrived, taller than she remembered, hollowed out in the cheeks, lean and strong. She might have felt relieved, but then Ashe’s eyes found hers, no longer mint, but rather withering leaves, pale and limp.

He smiled when he approached, greeting the others.

Annette should have stayed. She should have felt joy or pity or at least something less tight and strangling and horrible than the thing tying her stomach into knots. 

But she didn’t. So she ran.

#

_The knight returned to the village with all the stolen goods. The villagers were overjoyed to see him. They rushed to his horse before he could even dismount, demanding the story of his daring attack on the dastardly bandits._

_“But I did not attack them,” the knight said._

_“What? Then how did you recover our goods?”_

_“I offered to help them, that they may not have need to steal again.”_

_The villagers did not understand, but no matter how many times they pressed the knight, his story was always the same. Some grew angry, others fearful. Many said the bandits would now return, that the knight had doomed them to suffer the same fate a second time._

_The knight was forced to leave, angry shouts casting him out of the village he’d saved._

#

It was a grim business to fight former classmates, to question if your leader was sane, to wonder if the people you love would die. But that was war. That was what Annette had returned for, apparently.

The reunion had never been meant for any other purpose. She should have known the moment she glimpsed those lean, hungry, ragged bodies after five years away.

The only spark of joy in the long days that followed was the reappearance of Dedue, an unexpected bright spot in days and weeks and moons of grim battle. But that reunion, too, only served the war; Dedue joined the front lines with the rest of them nearly the moment he arrived.

Annette often wondered if she’d done the right thing leaving Dominic. Sometimes the news from home sounded dire; other times, nothing at all seemed amiss. War poisoned even the simplest things with uncertainty. 

And the things that had already been uncertain – the things that had already twisted her stomach at night, raced through her thoughts, left her mouth dry? When it came to those things, when it came to him...

Annette saw him sometimes, walking around at night, going gods only knew where. He’d been afraid of ghosts as a boy; now, he meandered the monastery in the dark, hunting for things Annette could not see. 

Sometimes, he disappeared into a room. She tried not to think about whose. Annette didn’t feel jealous, though her gut tightened every time she saw Ashe sit outside, sigh, then turn right around and head to that place. 

No, the feeling wasn’t jealousy. It was more like ... more like watching him drink poison and not being able to snatch the cup out of his hands.

#

_The knight left the village. He meant to ride to the next village, to the next person he could help, but his mind was troubled. The anger of the villagers chipped at his conscious, making him wonder if he had truly done the right thing in letting the bandits go._

_A man stopped him on the road. With a start, the knight realized it was one of the bandits. The man begged him for help, getting on his knees to entreat the knight._

_“Please,” the knight said, “stand. I will help you.”_

_“Quickly,” the bandit said. “This way.” He ran off down the road with the knight following._

#

They made their camp outside Enbarr.

Annette tried not to look at those gates, tried not to think about the city beyond those sturdy walls and stone barricades. Tomorrow, they would storm it, following Dimitri to his doom – or Edelgard’s. Only one would live through it. Or perhaps neither. 

Perhaps none of them. 

Annette glanced around the dying fire. Dedue was trying to coax food into Dimitri. Sylvain was staring at the ground, eyes empty. Ingrid watched him. She jerked to her feet when she realized Annette had caught her at it.

“I’m going to check the horses,” she announced. No one replied as she turned away and left the campfire. 

Mercedes was healing some cut on Felix, who looked as empty-eyed as Sylvain. Ashe watched Felix from across the fire. 

For an instant, the dark hid the new, hard planes of Ashe’s face. For an instant, Annette almost saw the boy she’d caught staring in the training room. _Still dreaming of knights._ But that probably wasn’t it, after all. She knew Felix’s was the room he disappeared into on those strange, cold nights. Did he love the swordsman? Or had his admiration merely shifted into lust over time? Maybe he’d just grown up enough to want to fuck knights instead of merely read about them. 

She laughed down at her meal of watery soup. It was an unfair thought, a cruel thought, but so much about her had become unfair and cruel during this damned war. She wasn’t the girl who’d kissed him in the greenhouse anymore; he wasn’t the boy she’d loved. 

Even so, when the others wandered away, even Felix, and the embers of the fire sputtered and died, she felt a trill in her chest as Ashe looked at her. His gaze was not unkind, but it was far from what it had been, far from the soothing, minty eyes that had made her heart race. 

Still, the hardness in his face was not unattractive. When he stood and said, “You can join me, if you like,” she pondered it only a moment before following him to his tent. 

They did not talk. They hardly kissed. Clothes were dispatched with cold efficiency before hands and mouths found the soft, aching places of their starved bodies. 

She wasn’t sure what she’d expected, but it was none of the things she found. There was nothing soft left on him, not his shoulders, not his chest, certainly not his cock. He was lean and strong and sparse, his hands even rougher than she imagined. 

He swung her around easily, placing her beneath him before his mouth trailed down her body, sucking and nipping. Even his tongue was powerful as he spread her legs and lapped at her cunt. She gasped and arched. His hands held her down, a gentle pressure that only made her want to squirm and writhe more. 

She was quivering and delirious when he lifted his head, wiping at his mouth. The eyes that gazed up the expanse of her flushed body were chipped jade, sharp and shattered. A fresh shiver rippled through her. 

He followed it, crawling over her. When he drew near, she reached up for him, placing her hands on either side of his face. 

He was panting. She could feel his hard cock against her leg. Even in the dark, she could see the freckles trailing down his neck. She traced them to his chest, felt the stutter of his heartbeat under those soft flakes dappling his skin. Perhaps there was something soft left of him. 

Then he swept down and his kiss left no doubt. It made heat flare through her body, a rush of flame. But a flame without light. 

She closed her eyes and surrendered to it, rolling her hips up, meeting the hard press of his mouth with her own. He ground against her, his cock rubbing against her slit as they both grunted and swayed. 

It was brusque, inelegant, hurried. And though he was far from her first, she’d still always imagined this differently, imagined _him_ differently. Perhaps she was still that girl in the greenhouse; perhaps it was too much to hope he was still the boy with the minty eyes. 

“Can I?” he rasped. 

“Yeah.” 

Her body yielded so eagerly to him when he pushed inside. Her sigh twined with his; her hips tilted to meet him. Then she clung to all the hard, sharp planes of his back as they both sweated and bucked and cried their desperation at the fragile walls of the tent. 

She didn’t think about him anymore. She couldn’t. She strained to move in time with his thrusts, to get her body closer to his somehow. Her nails cut crescents against the corded muscle of his back. His teeth grazed her neck, taunting tremulous skin.

It was almost cruel how they hit their peaks together, breaths thinning raggedly, bodies coiling tighter and tighter until Annette was sure she’d break in his arms, or he in hers. Perhaps he waited for her, or she for him; either way, when his body hitched, when hers clenched around him, the rush of warmth and wetness washed through them in tandem. 

She forgot it was his tent they’d retreated to until the blur of pleasure ebbed away, allowing thoughts to seep back in. 

“Sorry,” she said. “I’ll go.”

He pulled the threadbare military blanket over both of them. “It’s fine,” he said. 

She should have left then. Should have insisted on that much dignity for herself, if not for both of them.

She didn’t.

#

_The knight followed the man back to his home, a sturdy but simple house alone in the forest. The knight felt a moment of hesitation, of worry, of suspicion._

_Then a child ran out of the house. Another rushed over from the yard. They leapt into the man’s arms._

_The man crouched to embrace his children, looking back up at the knight. “I do not want to steal,” he said. “Truly, I don’t. But there are days when I do not know how else we might survive.”_

_The knight understood._

#

Enbarr fell.

They returned to the monastery, every one of them. Some grievously injured, but all of them alive. Miraculously alive. Sylvain had had a horse shot out from under him and was returning on a stretcher with a broken leg. Dedue had stepped in front of a gout of magic meant for Dimitri and been flung across Edelgard’s throne room with a crunch Annette could still hear. 

But they would recover, Mercedes said. They’d managed to save everyone, save all of Fodlan. 

“It isn’t over,” Ashe said.

He’d followed them only as far as Garreg Mach. There, Annette saw him break off, quietly veering away from the group while everyone else headed inside the monastery to recover and, eventually, to celebrate. 

“I know,” Annette said, “but we won.”

“Hm.” He sat atop his horse, looking far past Annette, far past Garreg Mach, out at something Annette could not see.

“Stay,” Annette said. “Leave in the morning. Rest for a night.” 

“It’s not over just because Edelgard is gone,” Ashe said. 

“That isn’t going to change tonight.” She hated the note of desperation she heard in her own voice, hated that she couldn’t shove it down, as cold as she tried to sound.

His cool eyes flickered down to her. Despite herself, she searched for the boy in the greenhouse somewhere within them. Perhaps that was why she was trying so hard; perhaps that was why she couldn’t just let him ride off into the dark alone. 

“I’m sorry, Annie.” It was soft as a breeze, fleeting as a dusting of snowflakes across her nose. 

“You always have a place in Dominic, if you need it,” she said.

He nodded, his gaze lingering just a moment longer before he turned away and nudged his horse onward, away from Garreg Mach, from the monastery, from her.

#

_The knight stayed with the man a day, helping mend his roof, telling stories to his children, assisting anywhere he could. Then he rode on, heading toward the next town or village he might help._

_Along his path, he was waylaid by one of the villagers he’d aided._

_“The bandits returned,” the man said, “just as we said they would. You could have stopped them, but you let them go and now we have nothing.”_

_The knight was stunned. He’d been with one of the bandits the entire day, had stayed in his home, met his children. The man could not have returned to the village to pillage it._

_Even so, the knight turned his horse and raced back down the road._

#

They celebrated without Ashe. Dedue and Sylvain recovered. Dimitri returned to Blaiddyd; Felix to Fraldarius, at least allegedly. Annette suspected the swordsman would stray from that path, if he meant to follow it at all.

Ingrid left for her homeland, but to serve as a knight rather than a leader. It suited her, Annette thought. 

“Will you go to Dominic?” Mercedes said, clasping Annette’s hands as they stood at the gates of Garreg Mach. 

“For now,” Annette said. “I need to see my mother and uncle again.”

Mercedes smiled. It was filled with warmth, even shot through with the sadness of parting. “Promise you’ll write. I’ll do the same.”

“Of course, Mercie. And when I can, I’ll come help you with the school.” 

Their goodbye was filled with as many tears as hugs and smiles. Annette set off with an aching heart. Despite the horrors she’d witnessed in the war, parting from the people she’d witnessed them with left a hole in her chest, a raw wound no magic could heal. They’d been a unit once, a family of sorts, and now they were all scattered across this broken continent, trying to heal themselves and the rest of Fodlan.

Dominic was as fractured as anywhere else. The war had consumed resources meant for living; food, wood and humanity were all in short supply. 

Annette threw herself into the task of mending her home. Her family was prominent, important, but that counted for little these days. It just meant they had resources. Annette used everything she could pry from her mother and uncle to help those who’d lost homes, loved ones, entire villages. It was like trying to stitch a wound closed before it stopped bleeding. Everywhere she looked, there was someone else in desperate need, someone who’d suffered unimaginably during the war and now had nothing left but scars. 

She wrote to Mercie, but their correspondence was always the same. They were both buried under the tasks they’d set before themselves, finding more and more hurt wherever they went and determined not to stop until the wounds healed. 

In a way, it was good. It didn’t allow Annette much time or space to remember how much she missed Mercedes and Ingrid and Dedue and all the others. 

Then he found her again.

Ashe tottered atop his horse, nearly collapsing off it when it stopped. Annette had been gathering food from the garden that she meant to bring to a few of the townsfolk down the way, but she dropped her basket when she saw him. Blood clung sticky and red to one side of his face, matting down his silver hair. Though he held the reins in both hands, one of his arms seemed oddly limp, as though he could barely command it to grip anything. 

“Hi,” he said. 

Then he really did collapse, sliding sideways before crashing to the ground, a tumble of dented armor and torn leather.

Annette gasped, rushing to his side. She rolled him onto his back. He squeezed his eyes shut and grit his teeth, his face even paler than usual. 

Angry tears sprang to Annette’s eyes, but she refused to let them fall. Not for him. 

“Are you proud of this?” she said. “Did you go and save the world all by yourself like you planned?”

He laughed, short and bitter. He opened eyes glassy with pain. His voice, when he spoke, was tight as a clenched fist. “No,” he said, “I suppose I didn’t.”

#

_The knight returned to the village as quickly as he could, racing along winding forest trails. When he arrived, he saw the villagers all gathered in the open square at the heart of the hamlet, standing around a wooden platform. A man was on the platform, a noose around his neck._

_The knight leapt from his horse, shoving through the crowd and climbing onto the platform to cut the rope of the noose._

_“What are you doing?” the villagers said. “We captured the bandit. It is our right to execute him.”_

_But the knight simply carried the bandit off the stage and set the man on his horse. The villagers, furious, threw stones and rotten vegetables, even as the knight fled with the man he’d saved._

#

Annette dabbed his face with a damp rag, trailing it down his cheeks to his neck. Ashe watched her dispassionately, even as the cloth traced the smattering of freckles that sprinkled his throat and tumbled over the bony protrusion of his collar bone. She wiped his bare chest, his shoulders, his arms. Then she paused.

He’d been staying in her home – her uncle’s home – for a few days. He badly needed to wash. He smelled like the road and like sweat and like cuts and bruises left unattended. The business of healing had necessarily come first. Annette had some proficiency with white magic, but the local herbalist had more, and physical remedies as well. Her poultices chased the red out of the edges of the gashes on his leg and arm; her tinctures made him sleep when he started regaining his strength and seemed poised to flee.

“I can do it,” Ashe said.

“No, it’s fine,” she said. “You should just rest.”

“You’re clearly uncomfortable.”

She shrugged. “It’s not like...” She clamped down on that. No use reiterating what they both already knew. Plus, what did it change? What did one desperate, fumbling fuck in the dark actually change? It had been far less intimate than what she did now in the light.

She pulled the sheets lower, exposing him to the hips. Then she dipped the rag in a water bucket, wringing it out before using it again.

He tried to sit up, wincing even as he did. She put a hand to his bare chest, keeping him down. “Don’t undo all our hard work healing you,” she said. 

He grumbled but complied and she set to work washing his torso with cold efficiency. She didn’t think about the scars laid like lace over his body. She didn’t think about the lean, hard muscle beneath her hands. She didn’t think about the shimmer of tiny silver hairs that stumbled over his abdomen and disappeared under the sheet. 

For a while, she believed she’d get through it. Even when she had to fold the sheet back completely and he lay entirely naked before her, even when she wiped around his hips, his thighs, his groin, she thought she was keeping her hands steady and her gaze implacable.

“I’m sorry.”

He was covered again, but those simple words laid him bare before her. Annette turned away, throwing the dirty rag on the pile of his filthy clothes. 

“Annette,” he said, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I showed up like this. I … didn’t know where else to go.”

She kept her back to him, shrugging. “I was the closest, like you said.”

“I lied.” 

She turned, found him watching her from the bed. He struggled up to sitting. “I lied. I … I could have gone to the capital. Obviously. But … I didn’t.”

“Why?” It was a cruel question. She saw it flicker across his face like she’d pinched him. But after all he’d put her through, she thought she deserved one biting, unfair question in return. 

“I don’t know,” he said. “I just … wanted to.”

He watched her. She could feel those cool eyes picking at her, searching for any response, but she carefully schooled her face to neutrality. He didn’t get to have that from her, not now, not after riding off to play hero and then falling at her doorstep half-dead.

“Fine,” she said. 

“Fine?” 

“Fine. You can go where you want. Dominic is as good as anywhere else, for all that we’re barely even half a town to begin with. Now lay back down and stop undoing the work of the people who are trying to keep you alive.”

He did and she left. She had plenty of other work to do, that day and every other. 

Her uncle was the “Baron of Dominic” in place of her father, but that meant little more than simply being the wealthiest person for a few miles around. Still, Annette took the title to heart. It meant, at worst, that they had more resources than most of the people around them and she was determined to use those for the folks who needed them. 

She went back to the task of rebuilding this little patch of Fodlan, this little churned up garden that she might be able to mend if she tended it carefully enough.

And all the while, Ashe healed. 

She tried not to think too hard about that, tried to keep herself busy, even as he started leaving his sickbed to help around her uncle’s home, even as he began venturing into the town, sometimes walking beside her with a basket of food or tools to rebuild a roof or just spare iron to get the blacksmith up and running again. He was slow at first and she moderated her pace to allow him to keep up, but then even that went away and she knew he wouldn’t stay much longer.

“Come with me,” he said on the day when he could ride a horse again.

“Where?”

“Gaspard.”

Ashe watched her, his eyes a little older now, a little wearier, but also a little warmer. “Come with me to Gaspard, Annette,” he said. “I can’t fix Fodlan. But I might be able to save Gaspard. With help.”

“What about Dominic?”

He shrugged. “At least they have your uncle. Gaspard has no one – no one’s left but me and I’m–” 

She heard what he didn’t say: Not legitimate. An orphan. A stray who happened to be taken in by the local lord and doted on like a “real” son.

“But the people know me,” he went on. “They – I think they trust me. I don’t know if I can do it on my own.”

“Why me?” 

She saw the little wince that drew. She wouldn’t apologize for it.

He shrugged a shoulder. “I thought you might want to.”

“That’s all?”

“No.”

She could have pressed further, but she didn’t. It would have been cruelty for cruelty’s sake. 

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I can’t.”

His face fell a little, though he tried to hide it. “Why not?”

Because he didn’t deserve it, some voice within her said. Because he didn’t just get to show up half-dead on her doorstep and act like that made up for the years and years he’d been away playing hero on his own. Because he couldn’t just call on her when he felt like it and ignore her the rest of the time. Because … because the ache in her chest would only deepen if she said yes right now.

“This place needs me,” Annette said. “I’m not going to leave the job half-done.”

He nodded. “OK.”

She allowed herself to step toward him, to open her arms to him. He met her there, holding her against him. She heard him breathing in the scent of her hair. She let herself inhale against his chest, cling to the fabric at the back of his shirt, close her eyes and dream about violets and mint. 

They stepped apart. He mounted his horse. Once again, she watched him ride away.

#

_The knight fled the village with the bandit in his saddle. They rode hard, fleeing angry shouts and flung stones._

_“Why?” the knight said. “Why? I told you I would help you. I promised the village. Why did you return? Why did you steal from them again?”_

_The man would not look at the knight when he spoke. “I have no children. I am not sick. But I … do not know what else to do. Perhaps this is just how I am. Perhaps I can do no better.”_

_Even so, the knight delivered the man to safety._

#

Dear Ashe,

How is Gaspard? Things are getting back to something like normal here. Still lots of work to be done, always lots of work to be done, but it doesn’t feel as dire as it once did.

How are your wounds? You better not come back with a bunch of new ones. I wrote to Mercie, told her what happened. She was pretty appalled. Her school is incredible, by the way. I visited once. She teaches children from all over. Some of the ones who have nowhere else to go even live there with her. Sometimes I go there and help her out, now that things are better here. 

I hope you’re doing well.

Sincerely,  
Annette

#

Annette,

I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to write back. It turns out rebuilding a place like Gaspard is even more work than I imagined. 

There were bandits here at first. And worse. Anyone who thought they could take advantage of a little off-the-road territory with no one leading it crawled out of some dank hole in the ground to do just that. I’ll admit I was … angry when I first returned. 

Things are better now. I think. I’m trying. For every roof I thatch, there are 12 people with no homes at all. At least I have my siblings, Rowan and Fina. I don’t think you ever met them, but they’re grown now. They were with Margrave Gautier during the war. I didn’t know how else to keep them safe. Apparently, they picked up a few things about how to keep a place like Gautier, or Gaspard, running. I couldn’t do this without them.

Mercedes’ school sounds wonderful. Could use one of those here. The number of orphans left behind by the war is [illegible, crossed out]. But I’ll find a way to fix it.

Ashe

#

Ashe,

I want to see it for myself. Can I visit, when my work here allows? (Just a visit.) [illegible, crossed out]

Annie

#

_The knight rode on, forlorn. He’d saved the village, but doomed the bandits to hunger and want. He’d saved the bandits, but left the village angry and vulnerable._

_He decided to leave. He could not help anyone, he believed, and so he would at least leave and not cause any more harm._

_One day, however, he came upon an empty field. It looked like it may have once belonged to a farmer. There were a few broken tools, a shed in the distance, a house beyond that and one single bag of seeds. The knight got off his horse and began planting the seeds. This, he reasoned, was something he could do without hurting anyone._

#

Annette was thoroughly sick of horses by the time she made it to Gaspard. She was only too grateful to get off the smelly beast and lead it onto smooth dirt paths winding between homes.

It was too large for a village, certainly, but the rebuilt Gaspard was hardly a town, either. It was a straggle of mismatched houses constructed from any available materials. Some of the homes looked like they were once storefronts; some of the storefronts had certainly once been homes. People were making due with whatever they could find.

As Annette walked, she found a bustling community. Everyone seemed to be out and about doing something, whether they were mending a fence or carrying water from a well or turning over the earth. 

In fact, there was a whole crew of people out in the fields at the edges of town, shirtless in the early blush of spring heat and digging huge furrows for crops. One man led an ox, but it seemed the town didn’t have enough animals for the work and were largely resorting to doing the sowing by hand. 

In all this, Annette saw no sign of Ashe. 

There was a castle farther afield. Well, what remained of a castle. The structure was far humbler than any castle Annette had ever witnessed. It must have once been Lonato’s, she suspected, though now it hardly looked inhabited at all. Still, it seemed the likeliest place to find Ashe, so she headed for it along the beaten dirt roads curling through Gaspard.

“Annette!”

She swiveled, searching for the source of the voice. She’d reached the edge of town, a gasp of space where the buildings ended but the road continued through hills and fields to the castle ahead. 

At first, she was baffled, unable to find whomever had called her, then she saw a man waving at her from the field. He ran toward her and as he neared, shirtless, his pants rolled up to his knees, sweat gleaming on his freckled chest, she felt her heart leap into her throat. 

Ashe beamed when he reached her. She smelled violets as she met that unhindered smile, a smile she thought she’d lost forever, a smile she thought he’d forgotten. His eyes were mint leaves in the sun when he looked at her. 

He’d recovered and more since the last time she’d seen him. His scars were old, faded – bad memories etched into his skin but nothing more. He wasn’t quite so pale, probably from working in the sun, and his body, while lean, wasn’t so hungry looking.

“You really came,” he said.

“I said I’d visit.” 

“Are you hungry? It’s a long journey.”

She nodded and he led her toward the castle. The closer they got to the edifice, the more children Annette saw playing off the roadside. Some would run up to Ashe, tug on his hand, bring him little gifts of flowers they’d found in the fields. By the time they made it to the castle itself, Ashe’s hands were full of daisy and aster. 

Ashe set the flowers aside like they were precious gems, laying them on the walkway before the door like he’d sprinkled stardust along the path. 

“Come on in,” he said. “You can leave the horse. Someone will get her.”

He opened the door, showing her into a vaulted entryway with stairs sweeping off to the sides. Annette had to blink to adjust to the darkness inside the castle, but it did not last long. Ashe led her through the building and out to a garden beyond.

“Just wait here a minute,” he said. “I’ll fetch something.”

Fetch something? Didn’t he have … help? A servant? Anyone? But as Annette sat on a wooden chair at a round little table in the garden, she saw only a couple more children. One older than the rest passed by, a lanky youth with neatly cropped silver hair. Annette didn’t need to see his eyes to know he was Ashe’s brother. The way he moved, the way he stopped to explain a flower to the child at his knee, the way he laughed – they gave him away instantly. 

Ashe returned with a plate of bread and cheese and meat all cut into neat squares. A girl Annette assumed was his sister followed, offering Annette some wine. 

“It’s not much, but it was made right here in Gaspard,” the girl said. 

“Thanks, Fina,” Ashe said. “Are you hungry?”

A sly smile curled the girl’s mouth. “Oh no, I’m fine. I’ve got some things to bring to the smithie anyway.” 

She left, and then it was only Ashe and Annette, sitting in this improbable garden eating with their fingers and drinking a sweet, fragrant wine chilled to contrast the afternoon’s heat. 

“Ashe, what is all this?” 

Yes, it had been moons and moons since she’d last seen him. Yes, the war was nearly a full year behind them now. But this, this was completely unlike what Annette had expected. She’d arrived in Gaspard half-fearing he’d be dead or living in a hovel. By all appearances, though, not only was Gaspard thriving, so was Ashe himself.

He rubbed his arm, fingers absently tracing a gash that had long ago turned into a puckered white scar. His voice quieted, some of the easy warmth he’d greeted her with fading. “I just wanted to save one thing. I’ve been here pretty much since you last saw me, working almost every day, trying to fix the one thing I might be able to fix.”

She was reaching across the table before she realized she was moving. Annette set her hand out, palm up, an invitation. He hesitated before taking it.

“You did fix it,” she said.

He shook his head. “Not yet. There’s a lot more to be done.”

“But it’s come a long way. Folks in Dominic aren’t this far along. My uncle certainly isn’t out there plowing fields.” 

Ashe laughed. “Your uncle is a baron. I’m just--”

“Ashe.”

He stopped, met her gaze. 

“You’re doing great.” 

He swallowed, the edges of a smile tugging at his mouth as he nodded, not quite agreeing but also not refusing the compliment. 

And there were the cracks, the wounds he’d patched over these past moons. She saw the hard edges he was trying to bury peeking back out, the hard edges she’d dashed herself against during the war, and after, trying to find him. 

He showed her the rest of Castle Gaspard. There were, as it turned out, people helping him, but they were all caretakers. The many children she’d seen were orphans of the war. When he returned to Gaspard, he’d found them on the streets begging for scraps and put them all in the keep instead, just as Lonato had done for him. He was returning his adoptive father’s kindness tenfold, though Ashe, of course, didn’t quite see it that way. 

“What else could I do?” he said. 

The journey from Dominic was long enough that she’d need to stay at least a night. She’d brought more than enough coin for an inn, but from the moment she’d entered the castle, she knew she’d be sleeping in it tonight. 

Ashe invited her to his room with easy familiarity. She heard no expectation in the offer; it was far too blunt for that. Even so, she accepted, following him to a modest bedchamber. No fancy tapestries. No exotic carpets made from animal pelts. Just an ordinary bed, a chest for some belongings and a writing desk and chair. The most extravagant part was probably the balcony they stood on sipping wine, but that was a feature of the structure itself, not a choice Ashe had consciously made. 

“This place,” Annette said as she leaned against the railing looking at the torchlight in the town below. “It’s beautiful.”

“I’m trying,” he said.

“No, I mean it.” She turned to him. He’d gotten more clothed as the day went on, though his tunic and trousers were so simple they may as well have been a farmer’s. “This place is incredible. I can’t believe you’ve done all this in so little time. This place is … it’s practically thriving. These people are rebuilding, they’re happy, they’re living their lives. I can barely say that for Dominic, for anywhere, really. Just here. Just Gaspard.”

He laughed, a twinge of bitterness hardening it, and looked back out at the town. “I suppose.”

Annette took another sip of her wine. It really was good. And just another example of how far this place had come. Who had ever even considered making wine in Gaspard before Ashe? No one cared about this place, no one bothered to love it. No one except him. 

She set her empty glass on the railing. He looked beautiful in the starlight, his freckles a reflection of the glints in the inky sky above. She’d always thought of those freckles as a small miracle. They were supposed to fade away over time, confused by age marks, wrinkles, scars. But Ashe’s freckles still stood out, stars lighting his pale face. 

She put a hand over his. “Hey,” she said, “come with me.”

He looked to their overlapping hands, then over at her. “Really?”

She nodded. “Yeah.”

He faced her, slid his hand from hers all the way to her waist to guide her closer. “You know that’s not why I asked you to come up here.”

She had her hands on his chest now. She could feel how toned it was through the cloth of his shirt. Since the moment she’d seen him in that field, she’d wanted to touch him, even as some deeper, wounded part of her begged her not to. It would be like last time, that cold, efficient fuck in an army tent. 

So what? It felt good, right? She trusted him. And she wanted him. And if it was just a night, what did that actually change? 

“I know,” she said. “And it’s not why I came here. But I’m here now. And I want you.”

He didn’t protest further, pressing his mouth down against hers. It was sweet with wine, but otherwise just as hard and urgent as she remembered. She didn’t care. She slipped her arms up around his neck, pulling him down closer, leaning her body against his. His hands went to the small of her back, nudging her forward, so close now she could feel him getting hard against her. It made her moan softly into his mouth. 

He moved his hands to her thighs, hiking her up off her feet. She wrapped her legs around his hips as he carried her toward the bed, their lips still groping against each other. 

They tumbled to the mattress in a heap. She started grabbing at his tunic, undoing the belt around his waist, but he held her by the wrists, moving her hands away. He perched over her now, silver hair framing his face. 

“I want to go slower this time,” he said. 

That sent a shiver of heat through her whole body. He watched her with desire, yes, but a slow-burning, lingering desire. His eyes did not leave her face as he waited. 

“Alright,” she said.

He smiled a little, soft and genuine. She only got to bask in that expression a moment before he brought his mouth back down to hers, kissing slowly, gently. He lingered against her lips, seemed to savor every moment they spent pressed to his. His hands moved from her wrists to her palms so their fingers could interlace. 

She couldn’t help squirming against him, her hips starting to move on their own as her body ached for him. Those featherlight kisses left her gasping when he moved to her neck instead, kissing down her throat, sucking at the place where neck dipped into shoulder. 

Goddess, why was this making her whole body feel so hot? He was barely touching her, his body over hers, only their hands connected. Yet when he nipped at that soft dip beside her shoulder she yelped and arched up, her whole body searching for his through the dark. 

“Ashe,” she moaned. “Let me touch you.”

He lifted his head to meet her eyes. She was panting beneath him now, but he looked so calm, so unflappably calm. 

“Is that what you want?” There was an edge to the question, like he didn’t really believe her.

“Yes, goddess, please.” 

He untangled their hands, sitting back. Annette could not follow quickly enough. She dispensed with his belt, got that damned tunic out of the way so she could run her hands over all that taut muscle she’d glimpsed earlier in the day. 

“Annette, let me--”

“Shut up, Ashe,” she said. 

She took his head in her hands, sweeping into a kiss, a hungry, _hard_ kiss. He murmured against her mouth and when she pulled away, she saw a flush in his cheeks. She kept one hand against his cheek even as the other trailed down, rubbing over his trousers. He was hard against her palm. His mouth opened in a sigh as she kept rubbing. Gods, how she wanted him bare in her hand. 

Annette encouraged him to lay back, then got his trousers off at last. She didn’t pause, didn’t give him time to do more than gasp as she ran her hand over his length, a quick, sure pump. She glanced up once before her tongue joined her hand, gliding up his shaft until she could fit her lips around his head. 

He arched a little, the bed sheets shifting as he writhed, clutching them beneath him.

Annette lowered slowly, deliberately, keeping a hand near the base as her mouth moved up and down in taunting pumps. 

She wouldn’t go too fast. She could slow this down, like he’d said. But she couldn’t slow it down forever. He felt so good in her mouth. The little noises he made as her tongue and lips toyed with him only made her want to take him deeper, find new ways to make him whimper and whine. 

She could hear him groping around on the table beside the bed as she worked, but she didn’t care enough to stop what she was doing. Her tongue found a deliciously sensitive place just at the base of the head, a place that make him emit a choked “fuck!” 

“Gods, Annie, if you keep doing this--” He interrupted himself with a moan. 

She smiled around him, but brought her mouth up off his cock. She met his eyes up the expanse of that lean, beautiful body, grinning as she licked her lips. 

“Fuck,” he breathed. 

He reached for her then, tugging her to his mouth. His kisses lost all pretense of softness. He rolled her over, pressed her into the bed by her mouth, pulled off her clothing so hastily it was a wonder he didn’t tear any of it. 

Then his fingers were at her entrance, feeling along her folds, teasing at the wetness gathering between her legs. His fingers were slick, somehow. She realized it was oil he’d been reaching for before. She could smell it now, sweet and mild like lavender, a brazen contrast to the voracious way he rubbed over her cunt, making her whole body hitch with pleasure. 

He pushed a finger insider her, just a single digit, but it seemed to fill her entire body. When he started moving it, rocking in and out, she chewed on her lower lip to keep from gasping. When he added a second finger she nearly drew blood trying not to shriek. 

Two fingers were nothing like a cock in terms of size, but the way he moved them inside her, the way he curled as he pushed in, had her almost weeping in a way no mere penis ever had. She grabbed her own tits, partly for something to hold on to, partly because squeezing them as his fingers pounded into her made the pleasure somehow even more intense. 

“Ashe, fuck, Ashe, I’m going to--”

“Good.” His voice was dark and husky. She could tell from the sound of it that he was leaning over her, watching her reach her peak. 

That was too much. She arched, breasts squeezed in her hands, mouth open in a soundless cry as she shuddered against him, whole body tightening only to release in a rush.

He removed his fingers as she melted down against the sheets, panting for breath. For a moment, he looked at his hand as though proud of the slick coating it. And fuck, if that didn’t send a fresh shiver through her whole body. 

She shuddered harder when he licked his fingers, lapping her taste off his hand. 

Then he looked to her. “I want you to do that to me, when you can.”

“Do … do what?” Her mind was still hazy from her release, but surely she’d heard wrong.

But Ashe just reached again for that vial of oil on the table beside the bed, holding it up for her. “I want you to fuck me.”

“With...”

“Your fingers.” He swallowed as though nervous. When she didn’t respond, he seemed a little sheepish. “Is that … Would that be OK?”

Gods, yes. 

She forced herself up, snatched the vial from his hands, drew him to her mouth by the neck. When they broke apart she said, “Get on your hands and knees.”

She saw a shiver ripple through him, then he rushed to obey. She allowed herself a moment to caress his ass, run her hand over the smooth, firm skin. Annette could hear his breathing getting more excited already. She gave his cock a quick pump and he quivered. 

She withdrew long enough to get her fingers slick with oil, then she brought one to his rim, tracing along it in slow circles.

“I haven’t done this before,” she said.

“It’s fine,” he said, _whined_ , because, truly, he wasn’t speaking in anything like those bold, declarative statements she was used to anymore. 

She pressed and he bit out a curse. Goddess, he wanted this bad. And that made her want to give it to him, made her want to watch all the ways she could pick him apart. He owed her at least this much.

He groaned as she pushed a finger inside. She paused, letting herself adjust as much as him. It was a strange feeling and not quite the one she’d expected. But when she moved that single digit and heard his breathing roughen it spurred her on.

“Ready for another?” she said.

“Y-yes,” he breathed. 

She got it inside. Oh, it was tight. She could feel how snugly even just two fingers fit, though as she moved them he relaxed around her and some of the tightness eased. 

“A-another,” he said. 

Goddess, how far was he going to go with this? Still, she attempted it, her fingers squeezed in around each other. This last one took a bit more doing, but finally she was inside. 

“Fuck, Annie, that’s good.” 

She bit her lip at that, at the desperate keen to his voice. He started shifting his hips even before she moved her hand. She followed his lead, moving inside him, feeling around. At some point she felt something _different_. It was hard to describe, but the moment she felt it he let out a cry and arched his whole back. 

Annette gnawed hard on her lip. He was so beautiful like this. She pressed for that odd lump again and got a full-body shudder for her efforts. 

That was it. She was focused, deviously focused. She didn’t give that place inside him a moment’s respite after that, drawing her fingers back only to press again for the thing within him that made his legs quiver, the thing that set his cock dripping and arms trembling. 

“Gods, Ashe, you’re so gorgeous like this.”

And, truly, he was. Unraveled, unhindered, utterly exposed. He put his face against the sheets and pushed back against her, his cries muffled by the bedding. 

She couldn’t help it. She reached down, touching herself with her free hand even while she rocked her fingers into him. He started stroking his own cock, his whines getting higher and more desperate as their hands worked in tandem to take him apart. 

She knew he was about to cum by the way he clenched around her fingers, the way his cries suddenly went silent, his breath stolen away. 

It finally hit him. Cum spurted onto the bed sheets. His whole body trembled like a leaf stripped from a branch by the wind. 

She eased her fingers out of him and he sank to the mattress, right over the wet spot he’d made. 

But Annette wasn’t finished. With no other distraction, her own had worked faster against her clit, delivering her a second orgasm born from the simple sight of Ashe naked and writhing on her hand. 

Then she lay beside him, spent and limp, depleted.

For a long while, they both just lay there, their breaths loud in the quiet and dark. Annette was still recovering, still drifting along the waning current of pleasure, when she felt him wiping off her hand, heard him cleaning himself up as well. 

He returned to the bed. Ashe shuffled close, putting an arm over her waist, resting his head against her shoulder.

“Is this OK?” he said, his voice more timid than at any previous point in the night. 

Perhaps she should have said no. Perhaps she should have insisted on distance, insisted on a buffer between sex and actual intimacy. For herself, if not for both of them.

She didn’t.

“It’s fine,” she said, kissing the top of his head.

#

_In the years that followed, the knight cared for the field he found. He tilled. He plowed. He sowed the seeds. He watered the fledgling plants as they grew. He rebuilt the house beside the shed, made it a home for himself._

_One day, someone rode past the little plot of land. They stopped, watching the knight work the earth in his bare hands, shirtless in the sunlight._

_“Sir, were you not a knight, once?”_

_The knight did not recognize the woman, but he said, “I still am.”_

_“I know,” the woman said. “For you once spared my father, a thief, that he might return to me and my siblings. He spoke often in the years to come of your kindness.”_

_The woman left the road and joined the knight in his field._

_“What are you doing?” the knight said._

_“I am repaying your good deed,” she said._

#

She left the next day.

His hug was warm. And if it lingered a moment longer than it ought, Annette didn’t mind. 

Ashe wished her a safe journey. Part of her wanted him to ask her to stay, but of course he didn’t, wouldn’t. Only his eyes betrayed his restraint, lingering on her, tracing her every move like he was committing her to memory. 

She started off through the town, marveling at it all over again before she reached the road meandering north, deeper into Kingdom territory. It seemed with every step that Gaspard became more incredible, like she’d briefly fallen into a fairy tale, an impossible place where the land and people alike truly were healing. 

The farther she rode from Gaspard, the more dreamlike it seemed.

Even the road itself began to fall apart as she traveled north and west. She saw towns that were mostly still rubble, villages with broken down war machines occupying farmers’ fields. She saw the skeletal remains of hamlets no one bothered still believing in. Once, she had to fend off bandits desperate enough to try attacking her on the road. And though her magic quickly dissuaded them, Annette could feel no victory in it.

Things improved closer to the capital, of course, but by the time Annette reached Dominic, it looked pale and dour. 

She told her uncle of what she’d seen in Gaspard, but he only laughed. When she pushed, he eventually placated her, offering her the job of going out and documenting exactly what she believed needed to be done. 

Annette leapt to the task, spending an entire moon talking to the townsfolk, seeing their homes, visiting every building in town. When she was done, she presented it all to her uncle, along with suggestions to address the missing thatch, the broken waterwheel, the faulty lever on the well. 

He set it aside, said he’d get to it later. 

Annette waited only a day. Then she went back to the town, enlisting any help she could. She climbed into the rafters of homes to lay fresh thatching, helped cut wood that could be smoothed into new boards, took on any task that needed doing. 

By the time her uncle noticed, it didn’t matter. The people didn’t need Annette anymore. Still, he took her aside, demanded an explanation, shouted about propriety, the proper order of things. 

But Annette had achieved what she needed to. And he was only a baron. The people would take care of themselves; they had everything they needed now. She’d seen to that, even when it meant using coins that only _sort of_ belonged to her. She was merely the baron’s niece, after all. 

She didn’t care. She took what she needed, both for the town, and, eventually, when she realized what she was about to do, for herself.

If the baron missed a few coins, she never found out before she left Dominic.

#

_The thief’s daughter was not the only person who found the knight and his small plot of land. Others came, often people who had nowhere else to go, folks wandering by, desperate for shelter, food, a kind turn._

_The knight took them all. And slowly the abandoned field bloomed into a village._

_One day, a man in a fine coat rode into the fledgling village. “Stop, you,” he said to the knight. “What do you think you’re doing?”_

_“We are planting, as you can see yourself.”_

_“Who’s land is this? You cannot be here.”_

_“It is mine.”_

_The man in the fine coat laughed. “This land belongs to the local lord and you, sir, are no lord.”_

_But the knight pulled out a trinket then, a trinket he’d long ago stopped wearing, the crest of Blaiddyd on a golden coin, the king’s official seal._

_The man in the fine coat reeled. “The court in Blaiddyd will hear of this,” he said, but he rode away and the knight never saw him again._

#

She left Dominic with a righteous fire spurring her on, but by the time she returned to Gaspard the flames had cooled, leaving her bashful when she re-entered the town.

This time, Ashe was on a roof helping replace thatch with clay tiles. He beamed when he saw her, rushing to the ground. 

“What are you doing here?” he said.

“I...” Annette swallowed. It was hard to say it, hard to hear it out loud, even if she’d known it long, long ago. “I want to stay.”

“Here?”

“Here,” she said. “With you.”

He blinked at that last, eyelids fluttering. “Alright,” he said, but it was a thin breath. He seemed to shake himself. “I-I have to finish this, but, well, you know the place. You can go up to the keep. Someone can help you find something to eat or--” 

“I’ll help.”

And she did, getting onto the roof beside him, laying tiles all afternoon, carrying down discarded bundles of thatch. It was a hard day’s work, and tedious, but by the time they were finished Annette was more sure than ever of her choice. 

Later, much later, as they lay in bed too exhausted from the day’s work to do more than trace the curves of each other’s bodies, he said, “Why?”

Annette sighed against his chest. “I want to do something. Actually do something. Something real, something tangible. I couldn’t do that in Dominic, but I feel like I could do it here.”

She could hear the smile in his soft sound of agreement. Ashe kissed the top of her head. 

“I didn’t come back for you, you know,” she said.

“I know.” 

“It wasn’t … like that. That’s not the reason.”

“I know.” 

Still, she pushed up against his bare chest so she could look down at him. “This isn’t about you.”

This time she got to see the smile warming his face. He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “Annie, I know. But I’m still glad you’re here.” 

“I’m … glad too.” 

She bent down, kissing him softly. No urgency now, no terrifying need to capture some perfect moment before it inevitably shattered. Just the gentle heat of his lips against hers, lips she’d taste as many times as she wanted, as many times as he offered. 

She pulled away to gaze down at him. His eyes were warm in the dark, so pale and green that the sliver of moonlight pattering into the room washed them with dusky purple, the color of violets tended in a greenhouse a lifetime away.

Still, she had to ask, she had to know, to be sure. This was her life now. “Does Felix come by?”

The smile tightened. He shrugged a shoulder. “Sometimes.”

Annette wouldn’t push for more. The errant swordsman’s stint as duke had been short-lived and disastrous. “Will that be a problem?” 

Even in the dark, she saw a flush color his cheeks. “I … I doubt he cares … but I … never really thought about...”

Annette laughed at his flustered response. “Well, I was thinking of making you my sole property, Ashe Ubert, but I suppose I can share. Occasionally.” 

His blush only deepened. “Occasionally.” He swallowed. “That’d probably be fine.” 

“If it’s not, you just tell him where to find me. I can handle Felix.”

Ashe’s blush receded. He smiled, stroking her cheek. “I’m sure you could.” 

She bent down to kiss him again and oh, it was sweet, knowing she could do this as many times as she liked, as many times as she could stand it, tasting sunlight and the sweet strawberries they’d snacked on until they fell asleep holding each other.

#

_The village grew to be a town. The homes multiplied. There were many fields now, all providing for the people who settled in this unlikely place._

_One night, bandits arrived. The knight caught them trying to steal from the storehouses. When the bandits saw the knight, they drew their knives, but the knight only put up his hands._

_“I am not going to harm you,” he said._

_“You mean to turn us over to hang, then,” one of the bandits said._

_“No,” the knight said._

_“Then what?”_

_“Stay.”_

_The bandits looked to each other, confused._

_“Put aside your knives. Stay here. We will help you build homes. We will give you food until you can start to make your own. Earn your place rather than taking it.”_

_Some of the bandits laughed at this, making their escape while they saw an opportunity to evade the knight. But others stayed, setting down their weapons, asking how they might help._

#

Annette set aside her crow feather quill, massaging an arthritic hand, a hand gnarled by time and age. Her back ached from sitting on the stone bench in the garden, ached as it did every day while she worked in this place.

She looked at the papers in her lap. They were tougher to read now than when she’d started this project as a young woman. Well, as a _younger_ woman. Documenting one’s life couldn’t truly begin until the tail end of it. Still, each passing year made the task more trying. 

Someone draped a shawl around her shoulders. “Nana, are you cold?”

Annette shook her head. “No, I’m fine.” 

“Don’t stay out here too late, alright?”

“I know,” Annette said. She smiled at the young woman before her, remembering when she’d been a small girl hiding behind Ashe’s legs as he introduced her to the rest of the children in the keep. How many had they taken in over the years? How many had they raised in this towering place once meant for lords and princes and kings? 

Annette shook her head. Too many to count, though she could still name each and every one. 

“Thank you, Harriet,” she said. 

The woman kissed her on the cheek. “Just let us know when you’re ready to head up to bed, OK, Nana?”

“Yes, alright. I just need to finish.” 

Harriet glanced at the pages laid on a wooden tablet in Annette’s lap. “Your story is almost done.”

Annette nodded.

“I’ll leave you to it then.” With a final pat, a final snugging of the shawl on her shoulders, Harriet left the garden. 

Annette sat with her pages, looking between them and the stone on the ground before her, a stone wreathed in violets and mint. 

“Almost done,” she said. The stone did not answer, but it did not need to. She knew what he’d say, could almost hear his smile, could feel him sitting beside her while she wrote, as he had so many times in the past. 

She was alone now. 

_Here lies a knight of Gaspard._

But she could not begrudge her solitude. After so many years of companionship, so many years spent with him at her side, it was only natural she’d sit here alone at the end, one final task before her.

Annette took up her quill.

#

_Once upon a time, there was a knight. He built a village from a plot of dirt, inviting orphans, bandits, wanderers, anyone who needed a home. The village grew to a town, to a city, to a community. And no matter the challenges they faced, they never stopped taking in those who were lost, those who needed shelter._

_When the knight eventually fell ill after spending his life caring for others, all of Gaspard cared for him in return. People filled his sick room day and night, reading to him, tending him, telling him stories of the villages he’d saved, of the people he’d helped._

_He died surrounded by so many loving companions they hardly fit in his bed chamber, his wife and one strange, silent swordsman clasping his hands in theirs. His funeral lasted many days. And even now, people return to his grave, leaving violets and mint at every visit._

_Here lies a knight of Gaspard. Loved by all he helped. Loyal, true and kind to the end._

_Here lies Ashe Ubert, a true knight._

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry for my crimes. If it makes you feel better, I have never read this and _not_ cried at the end.
> 
> I'm on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/purplebookcover) (18+ please).
> 
> I respond to every comment. Thank you, friends!


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